Here’s a plea to the lawmakers of the future: If you’re going to make a historic, comprehensive civil rights law, make a historic, comprehensive civil rights law. Please don’t riddle it with a bunch of waivers, loopholes, grace periods, and grandfather clauses.
Amtrak was given twenty years to comply with the ADA and didn’t come close to making that deadline.
A painfully graphic example of how that can undermine the whole point of a law is found in the following sad but true story about Amtrak, the nation’s passenger rail system. The Americans with Disabilities Act applies to Amtrak as much as any other area of public life. And why not? Amtrak is an important means of public transportation. Disabled folks need and deserve access to Amtrak trains and stations.
The ADA was signed into law in 1990, but it granted Amtrak a grace period of twenty years to comply with providing full access to all of its stations.
This may have been meant as an acknowledgement that it would take time, money, planning, and commitment to make up for so many decades of neglect. But that deadline passed more than ten years ago, in July 2010. Amtrak was so far behind in meeting that obligation that disability activists have complained vociferously to the U.S. Department of Justice.
One of those complaineers was Thomas Morgan, a paraplegic and wheelchair user. He was attending college in Ashland, Virginia, in 2016 and decided to take Amtrak home to visit his family in northern Virginia. But when he got to the station in Ashland, he discovered that the path to the boarding platform was inaccessible, and he couldn’t get on the train without climbing stairs. So he wasn’t able to ride.
Department of Justice lawyers investigated the complaints and found that Amtrak was indeed still far from compliance with the ADA.
So the department has been investigating and negotiating with Amtrak about this deficiency for years, and in December, it finally reached a settlement with Amtrak to avoid an ADA lawsuit. Under the agreement, Amtrak vows that, over the next ten years, it will design at least 135 stations to be accessible, complete construction on ninety of those stations, and have at least forty-five more under construction.
So let’s recap, shall we? Amtrak was given twenty years to comply with the ADA and didn’t come close to making that deadline. More than ten years passed before the Department of Justice compelled Amtrak to comply, and that agreement gives Amtrak another ten years to partially fulfill an obligation that was supposed to be completely fulfilled more than a decade ago.
Say the imaginable happens and Amtrak fails to get its act together. That could mean that on the fortieth anniversary of the signing of the ADA in 2030, Amtrak stations still might not be fully accessible.
Due to an additional requirement of the settlement, Amtrak recently established a $2.25 million fund to provide cash compensation for disabled folks who, like Morgan, have been harmed because certain Amtrak stations are not accessible. Anybody out there who’s had that problem should make a claim.
So at least there’s that. But again, my hope is that this outrageous tale provides a valuable legislative lesson. When it comes to this business of granting exemptions and making exceptions to civil rights laws, if you give some people an inch, they’ll take a mile.